To start with, I put down a reserve on this game early, figuring I liked the first well enough, so this should be OK. I heard a lot about it, but I never would have thought something like this current debate would come up from it. Worth the 5 dollar entry fee. On to the meat and potatoes though:



Games as Art

The first point that I want to make is that we seem to be in a gaming Renaissance, of sorts. Many games are pushing the envelope, starting with violence, nudity, sex scenes, moral choices, innocents, etc. I feel like this is a good push for the medium to earn respect as other mediums do. Movies have scenes involving rape, murder, sacrifice, and on and on, and they have been known to get heated debates.

Throughout history paintings have done the same, pushing what is acceptable, what people will consider painting and what is wrong. Changing from portraits of people to soup cans, from a still life to a splotch an elephant made as a trick. The most important thing about these changes, the scenes in movies, and in videogames is, in my opinion, the discussion that it makes. If a piece of art, a novel, a movie, a song, can be debated as to meaning, as to purpose, if it is even art, then in some way it did something right. I think we have seen from the DToid staff that this debate has two very different sides, each with equal merit. I think in this respect Modern Warfare 2 has achieved a status as being a piece of art, a point of culture that we can look back on, and relate to in the future. For this reason alone, the now infamous airport scene was worth the inclusion.


What is 'Innocent'?

One piece of this debate that bothers me is that people are saying the scene is bad because of innocents, and I started to think: What is innocent? Clearly, the citizens with no protection are innocent. Are the guards innocent? They are just doing their job, so sure. Are the terrorists innocent? One would be hard pressed to argue that, given the current knowledge of the situation. But let us broaden the scope. Who fights in a war? Are they innocent? What if someone was drafted into conflict, and killed people during their stay? Are they not the same as the security guards, just trying to do their job? With this in mind, who is innocent in a war like setting? Could the terrorists be defending their country, just as our army is perceived to be defending ours, by answering the 'call of duty'? Maybe.

On the topic of innocence, I wanted to touch on a few other video game comparisons. First is the GTA comparison. Many people say that in GTA you are also killing innocents, and the argument against that is that you have a choice, and it does not help you progress through the game. First, who in this crime ridden world is innocent (see above)? Second, you rob a bank. You kill cops. You can't run around them. They will kill you. Try to do a mission, and cops will swarm you. Sometimes you can not just run, you must kill. If you want to beat the game, you must kill innocents. But in our minds, I argue, it is more acceptable because we have walked into the role of an antagonist. We know Niko is bad, so his (our) actions are not as reprehensible, because they are expected. In MW2, the actions are against the character of the portrayed good American Soldier. What if you did not play an undercover agent, but instead a Terrorist? What if you had an alternate campaign, where you learned why they were doing this, spent time in his shoes, and ultimately wound up at the same place, killing innocents? Would you feel so violated then?

I also had to say that Fable had a good example of killing innocents. A sub theme of the argument that it is required to progress, is that your violence is rewarded. I wanted to analyze this in Fable a bit. If you want the full gamerscore, you can take violent actions to boost your score. You get directly rewarded. There is a 'moral choice' (the game was pretty black/white as to what was good and evil, but made the decision harder) where you could spare your own characters youth by forcing a woman who you just met to sacrifice hers. I did not see so many blogs about this particular decision, because it is not presented in a believable manner, and is not forced. But I am sure that many people made this choice without second thought for sake of their in game avatar. Not to say 'shame on you', but killing one person to save your own good looks, or killing many people to save many more...either if you have done one then don't do the other or remember that you are playing a video game primarily to be entertained, and that the scene was inserted for that purpose.

Will I Play It?

I figured a few people might ask, and I feel like I will. I think that it will be a memorable experience, and something that you have to go through at least once. I personally will try to play it as an artistic experience more than as an interactive murder simulator (to borrow from Fox news). As a last comment, I have a friend who is a Sociology/Psychology major, who has very little 'know' in the video game world. I attempted to summarize the situation to her as best I could, to get her reaction from it. She gave me a glazed over look, and said something like "So, it's a videogame." So maybe this is just something between us gamers. This comes from the same girl who felt empathy for every pedestrian I ran over, shanked or shot in Grand Theft Auto 4.

I didnt really know how else to call it. So yeah, over the holidays I received Gears 2. Having little else to do as the girlfriend was out of town and friends were celebrating holidays I decided to beat it that day. Good times. So I figured I would give anyone who either doesn't know about it my run down, or give people who care about my opinion on it the run down. Hooray.



So where to start? The original Gears I think is the best place. First of all I enjoyed this game. It was the first game that I played with my ex girlfriend. She giggled when she chainsawed someone in half. Adorable. But we ran through it on every difficulty. For what it was it was fun. Up until insane I never really noticed what the plot was. The action was good though, and the cover system was "new" (not brand new, but rarely used in mainstream).

So what did Clifford Bleszinski change in the newest installment? Everything. The graphics are marginally improved, which is cool. The scale of the game has changed from killing a few locust to killing the whole army. The emotional impact is now existent, if weak. So really, where to start? First the bread and butter enemies from the last one are still there. However there are probably twice as many new enemies, not including variations on the old ones. This includes the brumak (eat me PC users. : P), tickers, flamethrowers, sires, and a worm the size of a level. It was kind of neat, but odd. It was cool to see the expansion of the army and a diverse enemy base. However it also begged the question where the hell where these guys the last game? That can be overlooked though, as they added a lot.

They also introduced some new bosses some of which were fun. The last one was one of my favorites: a completely epic throwaway fight to make you feel awesome. The fight against the queens bodyguard was seriously weak though, and really the bosses failed to meet the last games standards (RAAM was a badass). The worm 'boss' was pretty awesome.


Badass

I suppose next I will talk about the emotional impact of the game. There was a lot of stuff going on here. The search for Doms wife was neat, and had an interesting twist. Taz was interesting as well. They really strived to do something more than the last one, and it showed.

Where did it fall short though? Sometimes the plot was just obnoxious. The vehicle level was annoying, and almost forced you to die. The enemies developed a keen sense of when you pull the trigger on the sniper rifle. I BS you not 75% or more of the time I shoot at them they duck the moment I fire. That was the number one cause of my frustration. There were a few glitches where a squad made would freak out. The new recovery system made the game easy compared to the first, but I guess games are becoming easier every day. Oh well.

Overall I would probably give the game a 50% improvement over the last title, earning overall about a 7.5 from me. It wasnt exceptional, but it was fairly good.

So I got Left 4 Dead for the holidays and have been getting a good chance to play it, for 360. After running through the campaigns, doing some online, doing some versus, and listening to some of the director commentary I realized this might be the worst game of last year. No really.

What went wrong?
4 hour story mode.
2 maps for multiplayer
4 'characters' (really jusat 1, the rest are just skins)
4 special enemies
1 incredibly trite plot
6 weapons (two of which are upgrades)
Repetitive gameplay
Difficulty just affects damage
In the director commentary they said they made the engine in a way to make them lazier.

How was this meant to be fun? If you told the community and one of those things about any game they would rip it apart! But you know what the weirdest thing is? I can't seem to put it down.



The game really looks terrible on paper, but when you sit down to play it suddenly something changes and it becomes incredibly fun. The achievements make you strive to do various things that spice up the gameplay. Playing with people teaches you new areas to hide, and forces you to help incompetent teammates. The director actually is neat because you don't know where and when anything will come from, which helps out a lot in replay. You can't just hunker down in area X because Tank 2 will show up and cant bass by obstacle Z. Its neat that way.

Ah teamwork in this game...there usually is none. Some people play without voice. Some people have the option, but dont use it. Some people blaze ahead and leave others behind them to die. Its rather annoying how poorly a team can go. But if you play single player the AI is so overpowered that you can't actually kill any special infected, so you need the crappy people team. When a team does work together it feels awesome. No special infected can bring you down, and you don't leave any man behind.

I find multiplayer to be the same thing as single player, but with every problem worsened. If you have crappy teammates you will die ten times faster. Or if you are infected you will never touch the other team. There are 2 maps (and really No Mercy is played about 4:1 to blood harvest). However there is a general feeling of relaxation while playing as the infected. You get infinite spawns, so if you die, its not big deal. I actually like that aspect because it makes it more fun to just get to try again in a bit.

So I guess overall I can't really say a score on this game. I figure I will be bored with it eventually and give it about a 6 or 7, but for now its the one game that I cant put down, at about an 8 or so.

(As a final comment, you PC users can just shut up now. I know you can do maps and mods and all sort of goodness that the 360 people can't, and I am sort of jealous. So in short, I know, keep your elitism to yourself, this is a 360 review, not PC. : P)

So here we are. I have covered a lot of games a lot of genres a lot of styles of endings and a lot of things that I loved. After all of this of course everyone will no doubt think "my favorite game ending is better". However the number one slot is one of the few games that I will beat just to see the ending. I have done that. Twice within one year because I like the ending so much.

If you have never played this game, shame on you. If you have never beaten this game shame on you. If you have never heard of this game get out of DToid, we don't want you here. This game is something that we have probably all played, each with different experience. Mine started with playing with my mom. I watched her play it. I then watched my brother play it. When I played it I knew all of their secrets of doing it. I could ask them for pointers if I needed help or got lost. I grew up physically and emotionally with this game. I know it sounds corny, but that is why I love that game.

Number One: Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past



So what is it that makes this game better than every other game? To start with the ending was the goal of the game. At the start of the game what was the object? Save the girl, save the world. Did you do it? Yes. Is that all? Pretty much. Some games get lost along the way. But in this one the goal never changed. Every step was to save Zelda, kill Gannon, and save the world. And you did it, so sit back and relax for a bit, you earned it.

First there is the text summary. The triforce itself explains to you what just happened. It gives you the closure to the plot. It says you have killed the bad guy, you can transform the world back to the way it was because you are the hero. You have the heart of gold, you stopped the evil plans. But is that enough? No.

The next series of images show you the effect you had on every single person. The king has returned along with the maidens, along with Zelda. They look and acknowledge you because you did it. Your dad is back alongside of you, perfectly healthy. The kid in the woods is playing with the animals again. He died! He turned into a tree after giving you his shovel! And now he is back. Every last person has the opportunity to return back to how they were before. They are going about their daily lives worry free because of you. And almost every one looks at the screen as if to say thank you to the player. Not to Link, but to the player for saving them.


And you know what? If you dont know this box art, shame on you

The largest of these moments is of course the returning of the master sword. Chad already did a wonderful recap of the first time you found the sword in his memory card section. So this is the reverse of it. It shows Link walking away from the pedestal where the sword was. It was your faithful companion throughout the game, the only thing that could vanquish the evil, and now it too can rest. It also showed the reverse of the taking of it, with you walking away, and light shining. I think that this mirroring is incredibly powerful for the whole scene, as it makes you recall the first time you retrieved the sword and were struck with that moment.

I have yet to touch the music, which is one of my favorite parts of this ending. Sometimes when watching a video of a game I have not played for a while I can get the music in my head no problem. Sometimes randomly walking I get that music stuck in my head. I could hum note for note the entire scene in timing with the video with no sound. It was so well composed and compliments the scene so incredibly well.

The emotional impact for me is immense. I enjoy the game, and spent a lot of time on it, so the closure it gives makes me smile quite a bit for that. But on top of that every time I beat the game I get to picture my mom and my brother doing the same, back when I was younger. The ending takes me back so far in my youth.

Thanks for reading!

Ooooo now it is getting exciting. This game did not originally come to mind when I thought about top video game endings. In fact, it has never reached any list that was positive. It may have reached the list of top three overhyped video games of ever. (Not according to MSNBC..although they did have some things right..we learned something today)

So what makes this ending so special? So beloved? It was a 180 from the game. The game sucked. It was repetitive. It became boring. Then the last boss fight was a twist that you should have seen coming from miles away. Then when you beat the boss it goes crazy. The ending all of the sudden blew my away. So if you don't know what I'm talking about you must never have completed the game:

NUMBER TWO: Assassins Creed



So get all your bickering out about it. But seriously this games ending kicked my ass. I would gladly do it all again just to be able to see that ending again (thank you youtube). Now why was it so awesome? The game was bollocks, but then you get this spectacular moment in the main room, gaining the assassin vision, and suddenly things change. The whole modern gang of assassins is out there. Someone else was in the room before and there is writing everywhere. And what does it mean? You figure it out, Sherlock.

At first I was just entertained by all of the stuff that was in there, and trying to figure it out. Then after using the internet to find it out, it was even crazier. Aztec/Mayan/Chinese references? What? This just got all out crazy. And why did they put it there? What does it mean? It was something awesome that you had to figure out on your own. It was powerful for the inquisitive, and actually managed to give the game a point.

The reason for me personally to love this so much is that it made me want the sequel. It made me see how kick ass the developers could be if they wanted to, and the whole thing opened up the possibility for what could happen.

Also, Jade has breasts.

I bet you all thought I forgot about this. And by you all I mean everyone who read my series. And cared. So that was really a note for me...*ahem*. Anyway I was on break for the holidays and my computer at home is still on dial up, so I didnt feel like testing my patience by writing the rest of the series. In any event, lets continue.

One of my favorite RPGs offered many of my favorite parts. It was the first game that I played where you could do a plus quest (keep your items/stats). It was the first game with a branching path of endings. You could go with various ways of doing things, change out characters and all that kind of stuff. It was neat. My favorite part was that if you were particularly savvy you could beat the last boss of the game before the game even sets out. And this gives way to my third favorite ending.

Number Three: Chrono Trigger



So for those of you who did not know about this I will explain. This is actually fairly spoiler free too, which is pretty kick ass. At the fair if you decide to go with a path less taken you can fight Lavos. If you have beaten the game maybe twice or three times you can actually manage to beat him. Neat huh?

The best part of this though is that you have already seen two of the endings for the game, so you know whats going on. So instead of giving you the super awesome uber ending, you get to go dick around with pixelated staff. I dont really remember much of what they say, but you just go around talking to all of them, and its pretty cool. I just liked it so much because it rewarded you for playing the game so much with something completely unexpected. Yeah. I have got to get back in the groove of this for the next two, because number two is almost 100% guaranteed to cause some controversy. Look out.